Louise Glück, and talking with God
"This April marks the 50th anniversary of Louise Glück’s first publication in Poetry, at the age of 22. Her poetry had previously only appeared in one other publication, Mademoiselle. In the April 1966 issue of Poetry, Glück’s three rhyming poems—which mingle alongside poems by Robert Duncan and Larry Eigner—signal the arrival of Glück’s spare, inward style and her interest in persona and form. They also introduce the artistic concerns that Glück would explore for decades to come: the pang of failed love, the intersection of the domestic and natural worlds, the agony of the self. Her first book, Firstborn, was published two years later, in 1968" (from Poetry magazine).
Louise Glück
Many years ago I had a beast of a paper route. I delivered a shopping news to a large number of homes. It was excruciatingly boring. So I talked with God. I don't remember what we said to each other, but it was more engaging than those newspapers filled with ads. I knew that I might be making up God's voice, so I convinced myself that if it really was God, the word "altar" would be said as a guarantee of authenticity.
Later, tiring of the endless trudging, and believing that the families in those homes must share my disdain for the shopping news, I took to leaving the bundles of papers in a hedge. I didn't ask God's opinion of my truancy, but one day a representative of the shopping news appeared at our front door. He and my mother asked me to drag all those wet bundles out of the hedge. I did so, and may have felt contrite. More likely, I knew I was being paid for what I didn't do, and was embarrassed to be caught at it. I wish, in these long years of retrospect, that I'd asked God about stashing the papers in the hedge, preferably before starting to do it. I suspect I would have been advised to quit the job instead.
What has this to do with Louise Glück's poem below? I still see the form of those soggy bundles. I am still grateful for the end of that paper route. My embarrassment passed long ago. At the moment, that is my understanding of the poem's last line, "The love of form is a love of endings."
Celestial Music
I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.
We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.
My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-
In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
On the same road, except it's winter now;
She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-
In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact
That we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.
- Louise Glück